Professional Documents
Culture Documents
KENNETH W. SEWELL
AMY M. WILLIAMS
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA
205
206 K. W. Sewell and A. M. Williams
METACONSTRUCTION
IMPLICIT CONSTRUCTION:
SUBTEXT AS NARRATIVE ANCHOR
DISCONTINUOUS NARRATIVES
AND TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE
barbers chair with a large mirror in front you and another large mirror
behind. Looking into the mirror, you see yourself, the room, the barber,
and what seems like an infinite number of other images that all bear
distinct resemblances to the objects and persons in the room. Sewell
(1997) describes how we might playfully explore such an environment:
But how would you react if your inspection of the mirror revealed
an image in one of the back views that was different from anything
before it, and different from your experience of the room? That image
is a traumatic memorial metaconstruction (the experience of living with
an unresolved traumatic remembrance). The self in the chair seems
different from (discontinuous with) some image in the back mirror
(the past). Thus, predicting what will appear on the front mirror from
iteration to iteration (i.e., the future) seems mind-boggling.
To the extent that a person has been traumatized and has experienced
the ensuing metaconstructive/narrative gap, a certain kind of work
is required to renarrate her life in an adaptive, forward-moving way.
We have proposed (Sewell & Williams, 2001; Sewell, 1997) a model of
psychotherapy that we believe can facilitate this work. However,
we do not suggest that all traumatized individuals will need psycho-
therapy in order to renarrate their life stories effectively. Some per-
sons are prompted (by a school assignment, a newspaper cartoon, a
research project, a telephone call, etc.) to engage in an elaborative trauma-
reliving process (described below) without the aid of a therapist. Cer-
tainly, some such persons could then proceed with the remaining
growth-oriented tasks unprompted by therapy or other outside struc-
tures. Nonetheless, many persons seek psychotherapy to approach this
challenge. Therefore, the model is described here to illustrate how a
therapist might achieve audience status, as well as conarrator status,
with a traumatized person and thereby prompt growth.
Psychotherapy is a designated interpersonal space in which a persons
life story can be told/created and retold/recreated without the con-
striction of narrating it as it happened (i.e., in real time). It is a bit like
writing a novel (or perhaps several alternative novels) based on a very
moving play in which the novelist played a starring role. Thus, the
overarching tasks are to make the implicit explicit, to reinvent and
redevelop characters, to reorganize social ties, and to try on as many
different selves as it takes to yield a future in which the author/narrator
can invest. The investment is life itself.
The elements of psychotherapy discussed below are not sequential
in a strict sense. However, the order used herein does represent the
212 K. W. Sewell and A. M. Williams
Symptom Management
Life Review
of this type yearn for coherence (p. 233). Thus, the active process of
remembering involves renarrating in the now the events of the past
writing one of the possible novels based on the emotionally-charged
play.
Michelle was consumed with self-blame for getting in the car with
the stranger who later assaulted her. When asked to describe her life
before the assault, she reflected on the abandonment by her parents
and her street-wise nature at a young age. Although she had become
tough as a way to survive her predicament, Michelle also remem-
bered times of great vulnerability, particularly when someone showed
signs of caring for her. Reconciling what for Michelle were experi-
enced as opposite self-constructions (street-smart and tough versus vul-
nerable and needy) would prove to be a substantial task requisite to
readjusting after the trauma. Furthermore, she would need to redefine
the notion of vulnerability, creating a story that would acknowledge
both the positive (vulnerability as leading to valued human connec-
tion) and negative (vulnerability as leading to betrayal and pain) as-
pects of the construct. Michelles life review clearly served dual func-
tions. First, the life review helped to identify the elements of her past
and the dimensions of her evaluation in need of renarration. This would
certainly be grist for the mill during subsequent phases of therapy.
Secondly, the process instantiated the content; in other words, Michelle
had to risk vulnerability in order to bring the therapist in as audience
to her story.
Trauma Reliving
Constructive Bridging
Often, traumatized clients have no clear sense of the future. With others,
the future is seen as presenting only more trauma. Extending the cocrea-
tive process of constructive bridging, intentional future metaconstruc-
tion involves sketching possible futures onto the front mirror images.
These coconstructed possible futures can be discussed, written
about, and experimented with by enacting them in therapy (via role-
play techniques) as well as out in the world (via fixed role and other
homework techniques). All these experiences serve to elaborate a
narrative of the future self: novelizing the future chapters, implicit to
explicit. Thus, the client is helped to construct a future self, try it on,
evaluate the fit, then continue the creative process until the future
metaconstruction seems subjectively continuous with other meta-
constructive levels.
Later in therapy, Gary felt that his depression had lifted and that
he had resolved several traumatic incidents from his past, including
the early sexual abuse. As termination of therapy was discussed, Gary
became anxious and admitted that he did not know how to be; he
Broken Narratives 217
was not sure how to project himself into a future unburdened by self-
blame and fear. Further, Gary was unsure of a future that did not
include the therapist. Subsequent sessions were spent literally rewrit-
ing Garys future. He and his therapist would write out a variety of
conceivable challenges, victories, and defeats. Then Gary would be
asked to write and talk about how he might react to these situations;
additional alternative reactions would then be explored in session. As
Gary became more comfortable with these new anticipations of his
world (in other words, as he practiced the art of flexible metacon-
struction), he came to view his future as possessing possibilities. By
coconstructing his future with the valued therapist, Gary came to see
his therapist as an important internalized part of himself and of his
futureeven after the termination of therapy.
CONCLUSIONS
It is our hope that therapists can use the constructivist model of post-
traumatic psychotherapy to assist persons in pain. For many therapists,
this model might seem foreign, daunting, and challenging. For others, it
might be viewed as a mere redescription of their current practices
albeit couched in a constructivist/narrative terminological frame. For
the former, we encourage you to experiment bravely with these con-
cepts and approaches. We believe that our own experimentation with
these tools has yielded not only improved clients, but therapists (selves)
more capable of entering the frightening social construction of a trau-
matized human being. For the latter therapists, we challenge you to test
the fit of a narrative metaphor. Much like learning to speak a new
language, novel metaphors can open even the most familiar of terrain
to creative reconstruction. Either way, we propose that conceptualizing
and enacting posttraumatic psychotherapy from this viewpoint will
serve to broaden the technical and theoretical repertoire of therapists
who share our goal of comforting the hurting client.
218 K. W. Sewell and A. M. Williams
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